Detailed information on the prices of new batteries for electric cars takes words out of the mouth, and the warranty does not solve much
2 hours ago | Peter Miller
Photo: Škoda Auto
Car companies are doing everything to get you to buy an electric car from them, but increasingly intensively leaking information about the economic justification of their long-term use says that you should avoid such a thing.
It is not the first time that we have covered this topic at length, we reviewed the prices of replacement batteries for electric cars a year and a half ago. But in the end, what was interesting about the whole article was not so much how much individual accumulators cost, but how little car companies are willing to talk about the whole thing at all. A few “open brave” were found, but mostly it was one big fog deliberately masking what a mess this topic is.
At the same time, can you imagine going to the dealer or the manufacturer to ask how much a new fender is for your car and they tell you they won’t tell you? It’s an absolutely absurd situation, it’s a spare part with its own code, price, availability. Batteries are basically the same, but their prices and availability are not presented with the same openness. Because, among other things, they show how extremely subsidized electric cars are today. And if your battery dies in them, which happens to everyone sooner or later, you’ll end up paying a lot more to replace it than you’d think given the price of the whole car.
However, a lot of water has passed since the publication of the mentioned article, so it is time to return to the topic. Electric cars have become a significantly more widespread thing since then, so it was possible to find out some new information in one way or another and get a few more details. The prices have also changed, so we will return to the topic with the help of materials from our colleagues from Auto Bild and discuss the attitudes of different car manufacturers to the prices of battery replacements one by one.
Let’s start with Tesla, which is a leader in the field of electromobility. But it is also a leader in obfuscation, as it still refuses to disclose how much it costs to buy a new flashlight for any model. It is absolutely absurd, even German colleagues are asking: “Doesn’t Tesla know its own prices?” Of course he knows them, but he doesn’t talk about them because the prices of accumulators are quite discouraging. In this case, we still don’t know anything definite, but according to earlier reports from owners who wanted to replace the battery, we are talking about amounts of around 20,000 Euros, i.e. about 482,000 CZK. We cannot say whether you will get a really new battery for it, it will most likely just be a refurbished one.
It is this mention that opens the way to another new finding – if your Tesla battery goes bad under warranty, you will never get a new one, that’s for sure. The frequent happy reactions of the owners of cars of this brand, whose battery went bad just a few months before the end of the warranty, suggesting that they have peace of mind for the next 8 years, are thus completely wrong. Just because the battery lasted a month less than it should have, Tesla is not going to give you one that lasts 7 years and 11 months longer than it has to. No, he will give you another, functional one, but only one that ensures that the warranty conditions are met. No one promised you more.
In the extreme – if your battery goes bad 1 day before the end of the warranty, Tesla just has to meet its legal obligations to give you a replacement in the car that will last just 1 more day. This is probably impossible to calculate, but you will simply get another used battery in better condition, so that it costs the car company as little as possible and your claim is satisfied. The idea that the limited lifespan of batteries is solved by a timely warranty replacement is so completely odd, there is clearly no escape from the declining capacity of accumulators.
Some are surely saying to themselves: “Bad Tesla, he’s lying again!” but beware, she is not alone. Even Audi, Fiat and Opel do not publish battery prices in principle. The attitude of Opel and Fiat is completely comical, because they refuse to publish prices, saying that prices for replacement batteries do not even exist, because the need for their replacement cannot even arise. At least Audi is fairer and says that prices for replacement batteries exist, but won’t disclose them.
BMW is finally open and differentiates between insurance damage caused by accident or theft and defects when it comes to battery prices. Why? Since in the first two cases he will not get anything back, in the second he will at least get back an unusable flashlight that can be “healed”. In the case of the smallest i3 model, it charges 14,000 Euros for a whole new battery, and 12,000 Euros for a replacement. That is 338 or 289 thousand CZK, prices for larger models will be higher, but they have not been published yet, the cars are very new. For completeness – a battery is considered defective when its capacity drops below 70 percent. In Auto Bild’s long-term test, the battery capacity of the i3 dropped to 74 percent in 8 years and 143,000 km, so it found itself in the classic scheme – 8 to 10 years of normal driving and the end.
Volkswagen refuses to disclose the exact prices of the batteries despite repeated requests, but gives hints. For newer ID models, it will cost up to 15,000 Euros (362,000 CZK), for older models such as e-Golf up to 20,000 Euros (482,000 CZK). The unclear prices are said to be due to the complexity of the construction and the variable number of articles. Excuse? Sure, at any given moment, VW knows the exact price for any package for any electric car, but how else would it charge compensation for, say, a package damaged in an accident? It’s an obvious electric fog.
Thank God, Mercedes doesn’t lie, we’re almost surprised, it’s even more of a blow, but the exact prices are. Now they are also public for the EQE model, it is 21,375.12 Euros, i.e. 515 thousand CZK. But they don’t come cheap even for the small EQB (18,739.50 Euros, i.e. 452,000 CZK), let alone for the high-end EQS. New batteries for this model cost – hold on – EUR 29,257.80, over CZK 705,000. You can buy a lot of beautiful whole cars for that. With the Mercedes EQS, you can sit on the battery and say: “Brm, brm.”
Even the price of the battery for the EQC is not much better, 28,516.68 Euros means about 688,000 CZK. EQV is in a similar position with 27,230.31 Euros (657,000 CZK). Only spare batteries for Smart EQ fortwo and Smart EQ forfour are relatively cheap, they cost 6,537.92 Euros, i.e. about 158,000 CZK. However, this is still a lot considering the price of these cars, and the price is only valid on the condition that you return the old batteries. Mercedes’ reassurance that only a few per thousand electric car owners need a replacement battery is comical again. So that there are more of them, when few of the brand’s electric cars are sold for more than a few years. And above all – who buys flashlights for three quarters of a million used, the rest of which may not even be worth that much? Making a garden house out of a car is a better solution for many.
Even Honda is not lying, the battery for the e model costs 7,283 Euros, i.e. about 176,000 CZK. Dacia is in a similar situation, today you can buy batteries for Spring for 6,769.65 Euros, i.e. 163,000 CZK, for which it was possible to buy an entire Sandero for that amount not long ago. Renault is not open, the general information about the price “around 9,000 Euros” for the battery (CZK 217,000) is fundamentally inaccurate. The sister Nissan, on the other hand, is open – a smaller battery for the Leaf is for 10,306 Euros, a larger one for 15,516 Euros. We have 249 and 374 thousand CZK, it hurts.
And we have the last round. Volvo, Hyundai and Kia? Fog again, car manufacturers only publish the price for the module, because the entire batteries are said not to be replaced. It’s nonsense, but even German colleagues say that at some point the batteries will fail as a whole and no partial boost will save them. Nevertheless, the obfuscation of the mentioned brands was at least partially avoided by finding out the number of modules and multiplying it by the price per module. The price of the entire battery will certainly be higher, even so it is obvious why they are not talking openly here. Randomly – for the Hyundai Kona-e the battery will cost at least 20,176.78 Euros (486 thousand CZK), for the Konu-e it is 33,771.68 Euros (814 thousand CZK), for the Hyundai Ioniq again 20,176.78 Euros (482 thousand CZK) and for Volvo XC40 Recharge EUR 37,854. That’s up to a brutal 912 thousand CZK.
This information really takes the words out of the mouth, buying an electric car with the vision of such an investment for some 8, maybe 10 years of ownership looks more and more like economic suicide.
Even the battery prices for the Škoda Enyaq remain in the dark, according to VW (and the battery prices for the comparable ID.4 model) it will be “about” 15,000 Euros. This is already a lot (CZK 362,000), considering the exact prices of batteries from other manufacturers, but considering the capacity of the Enyaq’s batteries, we are concerned that it will actually be even more. Photo: Škoda Auto
Source: Car picture
Petr Miler
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2023-08-31 10:59:02
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